What's Left of Me
by WhosInTheAttic
Summary: A twist on the end of Waters of Mars, the Time Lord Victorious, winner of the Time War, decides to cross the Void to reclaim his lost love. How will Rose Tyler cope with the man he's become?


Author's Notes: This contains spoilers for Waters of Mars and Journey's End. Beta'd by Larxene_12 over at LJ.

* * *

Listening to the cries of the dying Mars colonists had frayed him. He was angry at the universe and everything in it; time and time again he'd fought for what was right, minimized damage, saved lives, sacrificed body after body, friendship after friendship; he'd even lost Rose while struggling to carry his burden as the Last of the Time Lords. No more. He gave so much to repair the injustices of the universe for others, and now it was time to do something for himself.

After re-writing a fixed point and saving the lives of Adelaide Brooke, Yuri Kerenski, and Mia Bennett without incident, the Doctor decided that there were a few other Laws he'd like to break. He destroyed the futures of at least a thousand planets, erased them from existence to do what he once said was impossible—cross the Void.

The TARDIS shook with the strain of the journey, but not as forcefully as it had done the first time he'd made this journey, with Mickey and Rose in tow. He cackled as he moved manically around the console. It was working! He was crossing the void; doing the impossible! Of course he was; he was the Time Lord Victorious, the winner, the commander of the Laws of Time themselves. He would find Rose, and tell her what he'd done to reach her again. She'd be impressed; she'd tease him for his ego, but would be impressed by his cleverness and his ingenuity.

His thoughts grew stormy as he recalled his metacrisis. When he'd left Pete's World for what he thought was the last time, Rose had insisted that _he_ wasn't _him. _Kiss or no bloody kiss, certainly she still felt that way. Why would she want a boring human life, stuck on the slow path, when she could have the entire universe, with him? Back when he was all self-pity and self-hatred, he didn't think he deserved a life with Rose Tyler, so he'd never told her that there were ways to extend her lifespan; not to what his would be, of course, but he'd take five hundred years with Rose Tyler over sixty, and certainly over none at all. He would tell her that they could share more of a forever, and she would come away with him.

Once across the Void, he locked onto Rose's genetic signature, and when the TARDIS materialized in Pete's World, the Doctor stepped out to find himself in an alley. The air was brisk, and he felt the wind acutely when he poked his head around the corner to scan the city street.

It only took a moment for him to spot them coming from the East. The metacrisis had his arm around Rose's waist, and each of them were carrying a shopping bag in their free hands. He watched as his double leaned down and said something into her ear, and they both laughed. The Time Lord felt a surge of jealousy toward the man. How dare he look so happy with Rose, and look so _average _in his brainy specs, his faded jeans, his heavy jacket unzipped to reveal a Beatles t-shirt. How dare he have his arm around Rose Tyler?

Their togetherness made his anger flare, and seeing Rose happy in another man's arms… he couldn't tolerate it. He had to have her; she was _his. _He was finally ready to do what was necessary to show her that. Just as they passed, he grabbed Rose's hand and pulled her into the alley. She shrieked, but fell silent the minute her eyes fell on him.

Both Rose and his metacrisis seemed stunned into silence, looking at him wide-eyed. "Come to the TARDIS with me. Both of you," he insisted flatly. They followed, setting their shopping bags beside the time-ship, just within the shelter of the perception filter.

As the three entered the TARDIS, the human Doctor asked, "How did you get here? I know it had to be something insane and dangerous, otherwise I'd have tried it…before."

The Time Lord turned to grin at him, feeling smug. "I've re-written history! You don't think I could manage a little dimensional jump? Ha!" He had to wonder if the human genetics had dulled the wits of his metacrisis. _Of course _the metacrisis wouldn't be able to accept his feat—he still carried all that weakness, and it was only compounded by his humanity.

The human Doctor snorted, "That didn't answer my question. _How _did you _do it?" _he pressed, a sinking feeling in his gut telling him that he already knew the answer.

The Time Lord put on his best aren't-I-so-impressive smile, "Easy. I found 20 suns no one was using, and I made them all simultaneously supernova." He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the console, looking smug. He was convinced that at least Rose would be impressed with his methods, and honestly couldn't care less about what his metacrisis thought.

"You did _what?!" _the Doctor and Rose said simultaneously, Rose's face twisted in horror, and the jaw of the metacrisis clenching with rage.

The human Doctor's chest puffed out, ready for a confrontation, "You can't just go around creating uncontrolled transdimensional wormholes!"

The Time Lord looked at him smugly, "I can and I did." The Doctor uncrossed his arms and moved toward Rose, putting a hand at her waist and using his other hand to lift her chin so their eyes met, "I wanted to see you. I'd destroy a _thousand_ stars—a _hundred _thousand, even—for just one more chance to…" he trailed off and bent to press his lips to hers.

Rose gasped, memories of her first time on a Norwegian beach swirling in her mind, and how she'd wished that at that moment he'd been more than just an image, so they could have kissed like this. She didn't quite kiss him back, but she wasn't unreceptive. It was only a moment—a half a moment—before she came back to herself, and tried to push him away, turning her head to break the kiss. The Time Lord didn't accept this, and just lunged at her neck instead.

"Doctor, stop," she said sternly, struggling to push him away. He still didn't let her go; she was _his, _and he had to mark her as such, taste her skin.

"Oi, spaceman! That's my wife!" the human Doctor shouted, grabbing the Time Lord and pulling him away from Rose.

The Time Lord Doctor seized him by the throat and spun him, bending him backward over the console and pressing his back into the controls. "She is mine!" he growled through his clenched jaw, his nostrils flaring only inches from the human's face. He tightened his hold on his neck, and the human Doctor made a strangled sound. He could crush him, snuff out his timeline then and there and be done with him, but this wasn't about killing; it was about proving to Rose that _he_ was the stronger of the two. It was about proving to the metacrisis who the better man really was.

Rose raced forward and started tugging at the out-of-control Time Lord, "Let him go! Stop it! Just STOP IT!" She tugged at him, the desperation in Rose's voice gave the Doctor pause and quelled his rage just a bit; he took several steps back, still clenching his jaw, his body ready for a fight. Rose quickly insinuated herself between the two men. Rose's eyes narrowed and fists clenched and released before she hauled off and gave the Time Lord her best Jackie-Tyler-brand slap.

"How dare you?!" Rose shouted, and the Time Lord seized her wrist roughly.

"Let go of her!" the human Doctor barked and stepped forward, but Rose gave a small signal with her free hand and he stopped, but barely. His eyes were on fire as he glared at his counterpart.

"How dare _me?" _he growled back. She wriggled in his grasp as he pulled her closer. Rose set her jaw and spoke as levelly as she could.

"You left us here to make a life for ourselves, and we have. Now you think you can just swan in here like you own the place?"

The Time Lord held her cheek, "I do! I am the Time Lord Victorious, winner of the Time War. The Laws of Time are mine to dictate, and now I've come to claim what's mine."

A look of horror passed over Rose's face, "What's happened to you?" she said, tears coming to her eyes. The way her face seemed to break apart shook him to the core. Rose had only looked at him like that once before, and just like then, the action gave him pause. He let her wrist go, and moved to pull her into a hug. Instead, she shied away from him, into the arms of her husband.

He looked at them in each other's arms, Rose scared and clutching to his metacrisis, whose face was wearing a mask of concern for his wife, his eyes full of fury at the Time Lord before them.

Her husband gently touched her wrist, "Are you okay?"

Rose nodded, and that one simple gesture set the Time Lord into a rage again. How dare she shrink away from him? Didn't she realize he loved her? He was a hundred times the man that genetic mistake was. "Why would you choose _him," _he sneered at the human Doctor, "when you could have me?"

Rose straightened herself and looked at him, rubbing her wrist absently for a moment as she studied his face, looking for the traces of the man she once knew. "You left us here together Doctor; I fell in love with you—with _him," _she said, taking her husband's hand, "All over again. Three times I fell in love with the same man, but who the hell are _you?" _anger created a hardened lump in her throat, "You've got the same face, but you're not the same man at all."

"I can give you the _stars_, Rose. Come with me, and you could live for hundreds of years. We can be together, just like you wanted. They have this interesting little process in the sixty-third century—"

The human Doctor tackled the Time Lord to the floor, shouting at him in what could only be Gallifreyan. Rose watched as he straddled the Doctor's chest, allowing his very-human anger to drive him to rain blows onto the Doctor's face. "How _dare_ you come here to take her from me?! You made your choice you coward! You fucking twat! You couldn't even be arsed to say goodbye!" It had been more than two years for them, and the human Doctor's fury hadn't lessened with time; he held on to all that anger at his former self; for what he took from him, what his cowardice had done to Rose, and how much strain it had put on their budding relationship. The Doctor squirmed beneath him and rolled him onto his back, the Time Lord taking his own swing against the human.

"You're just a fucking laboratory accident! You don't deserve her!"

Rose looked on as the two men struggled on the floor, their anger marring the cadence of the beautiful language her husband sometimes whispered to her during tender moments.

"Stop!" she shouted, "Just stop!"

The Time Lord was on top of her husband now, leaning down to say something undoubtedly wretched into his ear, pressing his forearm across the man's throat.

As the human Doctor gasped for air, the Time Lord said in their native language, "I can kill you, right here, right now, and take Rose away with me. She can love me again, she will…even if I have to help it along," he wiggled the fingers of his free hand and the human Doctor became enraged. He struggled beneath the Time Lord, but couldn't free himself.

Rose could see her husband turning red, struggling for air under the force of this deranged man she'd once loved. She was desperate now, and raced over to pull the Time Lord from her husband. She was yelling and raining down blows on his back, pulling at his shoulders. "Stop, stop, stop!" she kept shouting, "Get off 'im!" but nothing seemed to be getting through. Her husband was starting to go a shade of purple, and Rose became frantic; in one last desperate attempt, she bellowed his name—his _real _name—followed by, "I'm _pregnant_!"

The Time Lord immediately let up on her Doctor, and the two men froze, turning to look up at her simultaneously, wearing identical stunned expressions. It was the first time since this all started that she could read the lines of the Time Lord's face and see the man she once knew.

"I was gonna tell you," she said, addressing her husband, "Tonight at dinner."

The human Doctor's shock dissolved into the widest grin she'd seen in ages, and she couldn't help but smile back at him.

The Time Lord was in complete shock, and couldn't take his eyes off Rose and straightened his back, his knees still on either side of the other Doctor's torso. He twisted to face her and brought his eyes to her stomach. "You're…?" Rose watched his anger crack, awe bleeding in at the fault lines.

The Time Lord stared at her still-flat belly. "Oh, Rose," he said, swallowing thickly. The human Doctor took this break in the Time Lord's anger to extricate himself from between his legs. He knew what this meant for the Time Lord; he hadn't been here the last six months, had no way of knowing that he and Rose had talked about this, had been trying for months to make this happen. The human Doctor was delighted at the news; he was going to be a father for the first time…again.

With the human Doctor no longer beneath him, the Doctor turned toward Rose, still on his knees, his cheekbone bruised, his lip split and bleeding; she withdrew, splaying a palm protectively over her stomach, and the human Doctor immediately rushed over to her. "Oh," the Time Lord said, suddenly crestfallen. "You don't think I'd…? I wouldn't! I'd _never_!" Rose had once loved him more than anything in two universes. She had done the impossible just to get back to him, and now she recoiled from him in fear.

Who—or _what_—had he become, that Rose Tyler, the woman who had once trusted him with her life, without question, would shrink away from him in fear. Not just fear for herself, but for her unborn child—_their_ unborn child, in a way. "I've gone too far," his voice broke. What had he _done_? The horror of his actions sank in. He'd been able to alter a fixed point without causing all of Time to collapse by _sheer luck _and suddenly he'd thought himself a God. A God who could erase civilizations; entire races that would never be, because of what he'd done. He knelt before Rose, a woman who had once looked at him in a way that made him want to be better; had _made _him better. Everything he'd learned about her and _from_ her helped him put himself back together again after he'd survived the War. Since she came into his life, he only wanted to live up to and exceed her expectations, even in the superficial sense, struggling to rebuild his body just for her. Now what sort of man was he? More than that; what sort of man was he in her eyes? A megalomaniac who would kill her unborn child? He sank back on his calves. "Oh Rose," he said, looking up at her past his double. "I'm so, so sorry. I shouldn't have come. I should…I'm sorry. I'll leave. I'm so sorry." He looked down in shame; he was no better than the Master now, and having forever tarnished himself in Rose's eyes…how could he come back from that?

Rose looked at him and saw her Doctor again. Not just the one on his knees before her, but her first Doctor. In an American bunker, she'd once stepped between him and a Dalek and unraveled him with her words; she'd watched his fury give way to sorrow and horror…and now she was witnessing it again; the break in the Oncoming Storm. She glanced at her husband, who nodded at her slightly. She squeezed his arm and stepped out from behind him.

Rose closed the distance between herself and the Time Lord, who was now sat back his lower legs, his head hung in shame. She knelt in front of him and, with fingers under his chin, raised his eyes to meet hers. "Hi," she smiled sadly, "It's good to see you again." She cupped his cheek and kissed him chastely on the lips.

"Rose—"

"Shhh. Just listen, yeah?" she began softly, "It took me a long time to cope with what happened in Norway that last time. I was angry with you for a long while. Now the years have passed, and I understand your choice; but this time, the choice is mine," she said, her voice breaking a little as she brought her second hand to ruffle his hair then frame his face. "I'm staying here, Doctor." Rose pressed another kiss to his cheek and then got to her feet. He took her hand, gently.

"Rose, may I…?" he trailed off, and his eyes flickered to her stomach.

"Yeah," she smiled. She wouldn't leave behind the life she'd built or the human Doctor she'd fallen so hopelessly in love with, but she could give him this.

The Doctor slipped his hands under the hem of her jumper and pressed them to her warm flesh, fingers splayed. Immediately he grinned, disbelief written all over his face. "Do you want to know what you're havin', mate?" he said through Rose's body to his other self.

Rose looked over her shoulder at her husband, and he grinned and nodded in response. She gave an answering smile and bit her lip. "Yeah, Doctor, why don't you tell us?"

The Time Lord smiled up at her, "It's a boy. A little boy." He hiked up her shirt just enough to press his cheek against her bare stomach, curling his arms around her back to hug her body to him. She could feel his smile growing wider and wider against her; she felt the warmth of his tears against her bare skin.

"The scans say it's twins," she said softly, putting her hand on his shoulder. The Doctor on his knees let out a strained laugh, and got to his feet, wiping tears from his eyes.

He went over to his metacrisis and looked him up and down. "Fatherhood looks good on you already." He turned to Rose and smiled, "Rose Tyler," he sighed, "you always remind me of the man I want to be." The Doctor swallowed thickly, eyes still shiny with tears and what looked like regret. "Now I think it's time that I leave," he said, gesturing toward the door.

Rose and her husband led the way hand-in-hand down the catwalk, and stepped back into the alley outside. They turned as one to face the Time Lord, who was standing in the doorway. "Goodbye, Doctor," Rose said, "I love you."

"Goodbye, Rose Tyler. I love you, too," he gave her a sad smile, and then turned to address his double. He said something to him in Gallifreyan, and immediately the Doctor's hand tightened around hers. The Time Lord turned with a grin and closed the TARDIS door.

Together, Rose and her husband watched the TARDIS dematerialize. When the last sounds of the engines faded, Rose turned to the Doctor and saw that his cheeks were wet with tears. "Doctor?" she moved to stand in front of him, "What did he say?"

He used his free hand to dry one cheek, and his face could barely contain his smile. "It's not twins," he said wiping his other cheek. "We're not having twins."

Rose stared at him for a moment as the cogs in her mind clicked into place. "But that means…" her eyes grew wide, and she couldn't finish the statement.

"Yeah," the Doctor said breathlessly.

"But how?"

"It doesn't matter, Rose," he said, pulling her into an embrace, "It doesn't matter," he kissed the top of her head as he started to weep again, and placed a hand on her stomach, "I'm not the last anymore."

The Doctor piloted the TARDIS back across the void, alone—as he should be—in his shame. He had destroyed hundreds of civilizations in his madness, allowing his own vanity to get the better of him. Even so; his pink and yellow human still managed to remind him of who he really was, and who he wanted to be. Once again Rose Tyler had pulled him back from the brink of destruction.

The small ray of hope he'd discovered on his journey almost made his deplorable actions bearable; at least somewhere in the vast expanse of the multiverse, there was another Time Lord. A boy who could have a real childhood; he'd play and read and laugh with his mum and dad, grow up to be brilliant, and learn about the best Gallifrey had to offer, without being sullied by the oppressive sense of obligation. He'd never have to peer into the Untempered Schism.

A brand new Time Lord, impossibly created from the lingering power of the Time Vortex, Rose, himself, and the power of a love that stretched across universes.


End file.
